History: Looking back at why we're about to spring forward

Bill Hand BillHandNBSJ

Monday

Mar 4, 2019 at 6:59 AMMar 9, 2019 at 11:50 AM

On Sunday you staggered out of bed with one hour’s less sleep under your pajamas.

Have you evern wondered what mental giants came up with the idea of Daylight Savings Time? And when someone decided that the earth just suddenly lurches an hour ahead every spring and then back every fall? And are you ready to slap the next person who giddily sings “Spring forward! Fall back!”?

Here’s the dirt: people have been doing this turning-the-clock thing since 1916.

That date might ring bells in your distant memory: it was mid-way through that “war to end all wars,” known then as the Great War (and which was renamed World War when World War II – primarily created from the results of treaties from World War I — took place) And it was the engineering-obsessed Germans who created it.

Germany and their allies, the Austrians, were trying everything they could to tilt a war going badly back in their favor. Some bright light decided that, if they turned their clocks ahead an hour in the spring, then yanked them back an hour in October they could conserve on their fuel and generate more electricity. The first day in world history to experience that event? April 30, 1916. At 11 p.m., by the way.

Other middle-European countries thought this idea was pretty cool and followed suit—even Britain, with whom Germany was at war, adopted their idea, ordering clocks turned back on May 21.

America pondered the notion for a couple of years before we got around to the Daylight Savings Time (DST) thing. Congress enacted the law on March 19, 1918—a law that was particularly amazing in that it was only one page long. It set five time zones in the continental U.S. askew (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific and Alaska). March 31st was to be the first DST in the nation, with 2 a.m. to be the moment of turning back… I suspect some joker selected that hour to see how many people would actually be dumb enough to stay awake until 2 a.m. to do it.

When the war was over our Congress voted to repeal Daylight Savings Time but, for whatever reason, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the effort. No problem: his party was outnumbered in Congress and they overrode the veto and so it kept getting dark an hour early until World War II rolled in and President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered us to start changing the clocks again.

That doesn’t mean DST didn’t continue to take place between the wars. Only that the option was turned over to the states to decide if they wanted to keep on doing it. North Carolina was one that did not. In a day before software and satelites magically reset your watch for you, it must have been maddening to have to stop and reset your watch every time you crossed state lines – especially if you lived on the border.

After World War II DST became a state-by-state option again. Congress finally got tired of so many states with different times that they passed a conformity act in 1966, ordering that all states fall in line with DST again—although states could still opt out if they passed official laws to that effect.

To this day our nation is Time Zone-schizophrenic. Arizona, for instance, ignores it, except on one or two Indian reservations. Hawaii ignores it. Small chunks of Indiana used to ignore it, but then the state went all conformist in 2005. It’s a shame because, outside of corn, basketball and Kurt Vonnegut, that was all that made anyone notice the place.

Contact Bill at bill.hand@newbernsj.com or 252-635-5677.

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